Two Russian agents killed in Caucasus: officials

A car bomb killed an officer from Russia's FSB security service while gunmen shot one of his colleagues dead as violence flared in the volatile Caucasus region on Monday, officials said.

The officer killed by the car bomb died in Dagestan after unidentified assailants planted a makeshift explosive device under his car, according to the Investigative Committee of the Prosecutor General's Office and a regional FSB spokesman.

Another FSB officer was killed in the nearby Caucasus region of Ingushetia when local security forces attempted to stop a car in the regional capital Nazran, a local official told AFP on condition of anonymity.

"They started shooting from the car. One security member was wounded and he died later of his wounds," the security official said, adding that one of the two assailants in the car was also killed and the other one detained.

In another attack in Nazran later in the day, an identified assailant shot at the car of Khusein Shadiyev, editor-in-chief of regional newspaper Serdalo, a police spokeswoman said.

"There was one shot. He received a light injury and was taken to a hospital," spokeswoman for the regional interior ministry, Madina Khadziyeva, told AFP, without saying who might be behind the attack.

Separately, in another Caucasus region of Kabardino-Balkaria a policeman died on the spot in the village of Kenzhe on Sunday when an unidentified assailant shot at him four times, the Investigative Committee of the Prosecutor General's Office said.

"The attacker fled the scene having seized his pistol and ammunition," the committee said, adding that a criminal probe was opened into the incident.